How to achieve this picture style?

BillieJoe14 · Mar 27, 2016

Hello there people,

I just registered here hoping you could help me with my wish.

I recently discovered some Austrian photographer and I'm absolutely digging here picture style but I just can't explain what exactly in her pictures gives this certain feel/look to them, but maybe you can explain this to me.

This is her page on Facebook (she doesn't have a website) and I'm talking about pictures like in this gallery.

I know she's using a 5D Mk2 and her 50 1.8 mostly, wide open of course. But I think there's a lot of tilt shift/unsharpness added afterwards in post processing, but that's not all. There is, at least for me, something else that gives the pictures an unique look. Some kind of soft focus and some popping colors, I think. They're technically not the best for sure, but I absolutely love them due this unique, calm style.

Am I just retarded or do you also see something "special" in here? Any ideas or suggestions how to achieve this look?

Thanks & best regards,
BJ

Derrel · Mar 27, 2016

The $99, five-bladed diaphragfm and cheap optical forumal of the Canon 50mm f/1.8 EF-II lens is responsible for much of that harsh, hashy, nervous background bokeh--an optical signature variation seldom seen since the 1960's in a 35mm type lens system. On the shot of the marketplace, that very soft, soft-focus, low resolution is typical of a cheap 50mm lens hot wide-open; that type of diffused image is known as "veiling glare". Although it has nothing much to do with "glare" as we normally use the word, the veiling, the obscuring, comes from poor optical performance across the entire frame, but which is worse at the periphery of the image. MANY prime lenses of normal pedigree has a lot of veiling glare when shot wide-open. Veiling glare wide-open to 3/4 of a stop down is pretty common on hundreds of lens designs; most 35, 50mm, and 85mm to 135mm prime lenses will show some veiling glare when shot wide-open.

She's also fallen into the deliberately desaturated blacks way of processing, which is trendy right now and has been for the last three to four years, among a certain segment of the population.

A good amount of her travel photography is done with shallow depth of field. I used to own the Canon 50/1.8 EF-II: its nervous, hashy background bokeh creates an odd, unsettling rendering of the background, and makes the perception of depth and distance sort of leap out at the viewer. I still recall the frist high-resolutioin digital images I saw shot with that lens; it creates a sort of "faked-looking", sort of "worked" background effect when close-in subjects are shot using very wide f/stops. In a sort of related yet different vein is the swirly bokeh popular with those who love old Communist East Germany era lenses.

What she is doing is using a very cheap, poorly made, odd lens in a way that puts what I have long referred to as a visual impression on the photos is makes when used a certain way. The Canon 50/1.8 EF-II uses a very outdated, 5-bladed iris...this causes a very unusual circle of confusion rendering that a 6-, 7,-or 9-bladed iris does not create. On certain subjects, like floral/shrubbery/tree backdrops, or patterned backdrops, this 5-bladed iris causes the blurred areas to be rendered in an outdated way that is not seen in hardly any modern d-slr lenses; it's a lens that creates "nervous" or "hashy" bokeh--especially on busy, floral/foliage/tree/bush backdrops, or patterned backdrops with repeating elements. This woman is using a lenswork method, that of creating a visual impression by using a lens that has a very unusual drawing style, as it is called.

Many younger shooters and viewers are fascinated by this type of jarring, old-fashioned background rendering. By the early 1960's, 5-bladed diaphragms were entering their last days. By the end of the 1970's, the 6-bladed diaphragm has been supplanted by the 7-bladed iris on most 35mm and rollfilm lenses.

NO, you are not developmentally challenged: you are seeing a 1950's-era lens signature being shot on grainless digital. If you want to create a cohesive "look", it's easy to take one lens that has a very distinctive visual impression, a special signature drawing style, and then to use it over and over and over, in a way that makes it look "lensy". A few lenses can do this: 4 to 10.5mm fisheye, 15-17mm rectilinear wide, 300mm lens, 24mm f/1.2 wide, 200 f/2, 85mm f/1.2 among them.

Derrel · Mar 27, 2016

You do have it right--she is creating a picture style. A lot of people cannot handle a dispassionate analysis of the 50/1.8 EF-II, a lens that has earned itself a rep as the "Nifty Fifty", always seeing any mention of its nervous bokeh as some sort of shot at Canon. The lens is popular with many people who own only one prime lens, often the 50 EF-II. It's such a popular lens, there's even a cheap Yongnuo COPY of it! Perfection and middle-of-the-road is not always the best artistic choice to prioritize. Shallow DOF work has become a huge trend, and there are multiple ways to shoot shallow DOF travel images. Travel images like hers are often sold as stock images, and rigorous attention to "perfection" has led most stock photos toward a very boring, standardized f/64 Group ideal of perfectionism and technical rigidness: this is why her travel images stand out--they are done against the grain, with a lens that puts a lot of its own flaws into the recorded pixels. This is a lot like aging liquor in barrels--it adds character, nuance, flavor.

The basic idea though is to use a lens with a noticeable drawing style, across a range of subjects. Lenses like the swirly-bokeh DDR-era ( Communist East German-era) lenses, the multiple and each fairly different Lensbaby models, the ultra-fast Canon f/1.2-L series lenses from Canon, the 24mm,50mm,and 85mm f/1.2-L series models, the 300/2.8, and other lenses that have a very distinct drawing style; when a person shoots a lot of images with a lens that has a distinct drawing style, it can seem to imbue the work with that certain something.

Shooting many lenses wide-open maximizes lens defects, and adds a degree of imperfection that can make an image stand out! In today's digital capture and Photoshop post-processing world, many photos look sterile and boring because they have been "perfected" so much either by near-perfect lenses, and/or by software corrections that remove all manner of optical defects that give a lens a "character". A case in point: correcting away wide-angle barrel distortion on one lens I own makes me dislike the landscapes shot with it and then corrected in software to "perfect" rendering standards-- I actually PREFER the un-corrected images that the Nikon 35 f/2 AF-D creates over the ones where the barrel distortion has been processed away in software.

There are many, many lenses, and most of them have become close to 'neutral' in their rendering, and with Adobe's one-click lens correction profiles, it's easy to get perfect by the numbers, sterile, white bread images. This is very far from the older lens designs, which often have a number of signature details.

The_Traveler · Mar 27, 2016

Most of her shots are slightly warmed in temperature and slightly over-saturated.
She is shooting with a fairly wide lens opening in areas that have a lot of depth thus the shallow depth of field From the large aperture provides the layered look makes a big impact.
Otherwise, there's not much more to them, some good, some OK - but nothing special.

BillieJoe14 · Mar 27, 2016

Derrel said:
The $99, five-bladed diaphragfm and cheap optical forumal of the Canon 50mm f/1.8 EF-II lens is responsible for much of that harsh, hashy, nervous background bokeh [...]

Derrel said:
You do have it right--she is creating a picture style. A lot of people cannot handle a dispassionate analysis of the 50/1.8 EF-II, a lens that has earned itself a rep as the "Nifty Fifty", always seeing any mention of its nervous bokeh as some sort of shot at Canon [...]

Derrel, this were two really informative, well explained postings - thanks a lot for this, I highly appreciate your efford you put in carrying this information over!

And you were totally right, I also think that's what makes her pictures popping out at least for me, they're not like what modern, more close to perfect lenses produce. But I like it because it's different.

Do you actually think she sometimes added more unsharpness in post-processing to create an even more extreme DOF? Some of her pictures look kind of extreme when I consider how far she must have been away of the focussed object and still maintain an extremely blurred background.

I have a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art and well, it's a sharp and well made lens, but quite sterile. I had the Canon's 50mm f/1.8 EF-II successor (50mm f/1.8 STM) when I started out photography with Canon last year, but switched to Nikon pretty soon. I actually didn't have the "view of a photographer" when I was with that lens since I was an absolute beginner, so I didn't really care for it's rendering qualities (or non-qualities).

Do you possibly know if there are alternatives for Nikon fullframe DSLR's (I have a D750) that come somehow in the direction of the EF-II ?

The_Traveler said:
Most of her shots are slightly warmed in temperature and slightly over-saturated.
She is shooting with a fairly wide lens opening in areas that have a lot of depth thus the shallow depth of field From the large aperture provides the layered look makes a big impact.
Otherwise, there's not much more to them, some good, some OK - but nothing special.

Hey you!

Also thanks for your input!

All the best,
BJ